What's Esther about?

Esther was written probably three hundred years before Jesus was born. It is an imaginary story of how the Jews survived potential annihilation by a Persian king a century after they had been released from Babylon. Although the entire story is fiction, many of the cultural details are accurate so we know that the original author had lived in Persia. The entire purpose of the story is to describe how a woman, using enormous courage and integrity, saved the people from annihilation. Curiously, God is never mentioned. There is only one other book which never mentions God, the Song of Solomon.

The story tells how Haman, a senior executive to the King, became jealous at Jewish successes and enraged at their refusal to acknowledge the king and his religion. Haman plots to have the Jews exterminated. However, Esther, a Jewish orphan, has impressed the king and becomes his wife without revealing that she is Jewish. Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, loyally reports an assassination attempt on the king but Haman ensures he receives no recognition or reward and accuses Mordecai and all Jews of treachery toward the king.

The king believes these lies and orders Jews to be exterminated on a date that was decided by lot. The night before the slaughter is to happen Haman has a gallows constructed on which to hang Mordecai. The king cannot sleep that night and discovers in reading court documents that Haman had prevented Mordecai from being honoured for his loyalty. Esther, as queen, invites the king and Haman to a banquet at which she accuses Haman of lying and the king orders Haman to be hung on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. The king then authorizes all Jews to be honoured and vengeance is taken upon those who had intended to annihilate them.

In honour of the banquet Esther arranged, an annual feast is proclaimed and remains a major Jewish holy day, the feast of Purim. “Purim” means “lot,” commemorating the date Haman had chosen by lot but on which fortunes were reversed and he was executed and the Jews honoured.

How Esther is helpful to us

The fact that God is never mentioned suggests that the author was attempting to describe how God works through history without needing miracles or some obvious intervention. Humans, the author suggests, sometimes do the work of God, or put another way, God acts effectively sometimes through human acts. In a time like ours in which miraculous interventions by God are seen as imaginary, this understanding of God’s presence can be of assistance to us.